God Must Laugh

Logo courtesy of Steve Knight

Greetings denizens of the internet. My name is Rob and I’m performing an experiment. Can the collective intelligence of the net produce a preachable sermon? Maybe the digital age is incompatible with such an ancient format. Then again, maybe the lurker will join hands with the hacker and usher in an age of peace and enlightenment. Maybe I’m just lazy and want some free content and editing. If it all works out, we’ll put the sermon text, audio, and video up on this blog under a non-commercial, share-alike Creative Commons license. Deadline: Sept. 28th. More info here.

Update:

• Step one complete! We have a topic. Now we need some texts. More info here.
• Step two complete! We have a topic. Now we need clarity. More info here.
• Check out our wiki! (What’s a wiki? Info here.)  Click here to request access.

FAQ:

How can I get involved with the Open Source Sermon? First, post a comment. Then, tell your friends. And if you’re extra-cool grab the RSS feed of the blog and the comments section, so you can stay up to date on the conversation. (What’s RSS? Info here) If you’re extra-extra cool, give us a thumbs up on StumbleUpon.

World’s first? Seriously? As far as I know, yeah. I did some digging on Google and couldn’t find anything like our project. Sure, people steal sermons off the net all the time. Some preachers bounce ideas off a small group of friends. I even heard of a church where a small committee works with their minister to make the sermons better. But I’ve never heard of an open source sermon. Do some digging of your own. I’d love to be proven wrong just to pick the brains of the folks who pulled it off.

What’s open source? Originally used to describe software development where the source code is shared, open source has become a cultural movement centered around shared effort and content. A single project could have hundreds or even thousands of creators, all working as their own skills and time allow. Surprisingly, this doesn’t (usually) lead to complete chaos. In fact, the competing agendas, opinions, and methodologies of the contributors (usually) make the project better. You can find out more from Wikipedia’s Entry on Open Source.

What’s Creative Commons? On the one hand you have folks who want to monopolize mouse ears for all eternity. On the other hand, you have folks who believe all content wants to be free, and who take great joy in helping it get that way. Creative Commons is a center of sanity between the two factions. “Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.” Dig deeper at the Creative Commons Website.